PAM GRANT DINING OUT
Paprika Bistro
Address: 2524 Estevan Ave.
Tel: 250-592-7424
Hours: Dinner from 5: 30 p.m., Monday to Saturday.
Major credit cards and Interac accepted. Wheelchair accessible.
Rating: 5
RATINGS
1 Below bad
2 Below average
3 Average
4 Above average
5 Excellent
You might think that taking over a successful restaurant is easy, but Jeff Parker had big shoes to fill when he got the keys for Paprika Bistro in 2009. Fortunately, along with the name, he retained the services of chef Anna Hunt, who worked for previous owners chef George Szasz and his wife Linda at their new operation, Stage.
Unfortunately, Parker made the kind of mistake you can't ignore when I dropped by for dinner with a friend. As we approached the entrance, we noticed he was conversing with someone who was blocking it. We opened the door and the owner looked at us with a slight shrug as we squeezed in to stand at the reception desk. As the four of us stood in a space the size of a small bathroom, to make an absurdly awkward situation worse, a server appeared after a minute or two, but stopped five metres from us, glancing between us and the owner.
I was about to suggest we leave when Parker excused himself to ask if we had a reservation. When I replied that we didn't, he turned to the server and said "You can seat them there," gesturing toward the back of the room.
Ah, but of the three rooms that Paprika comprises, the centre one is not only the least appealing, it was completely empty. Nor did we want to listen to this person drone on at Parker about wine any longer. I said we would prefer to sit in the adjacent room, which had about eight customers, and again, instead of responding to us, Parker turned to the server and mentioned a table number in the next room. As greetings go, this was an utter failure.
Fortunately, the menu provided a pleasant distraction. Hunt offers European classics with a contemporary edge, using local goods - right down to the Victoria Gin produced by her family's business. Specials are genuinely tempting (crisp pork belly, Savoy cabbage sautéed with apples and dates; linguine with braised rabbit, bacon and green olives).
Though prices lean toward the higher end for Victoria, in keeping with the idea of a bistro, each evening a plat du soir is offered for $16 ($20 with a glass of house wine). Recent examples include curried pork and apple sausage with risotto and roasted acorn squash, and roast chicken and potatoes with wilted greens.
We considered the ploughman's platter (local cheese, truffled pork and wild mushroom terrine and pork sausage scented with orange and bitters), but two items rarely seen locally won out. I savoured steak tartare with lightly dressed greens and grilled bread, while Karen worked her way through a bowl of steamed clams peppered with chopped bacon and served with succotash.
Entrées showcase Hunt's knack for updating French classics. Fork-tender lamb nestled in rich red wine sauce with grilled onions and garlic chips was well matched with chickpeas braised with tomatoes and green beans so fresh they might have been picked that morning.
I enjoyed one of my favourite cuts of steak, onglet, carved in thick slices and piled on a mound of crushed red potatoes spiked with horseradish dotted with garlic confit and fresh herbs.
Things we didn't like besides our greeting can be easily fixed. As night fell, the dim lighting was insufficient and sucked the colour out of the food on our plates. It also meant that the cellphone a customer two tables over waved around as he read his email stood out like a beacon. A room and cuisine of this quality deserves a no-cellphone policy. And though the intriguing wine list offers more than 60 options, it is pricey for a bistro with few bottles under $40.
Specials are now available online each night, and hopefully in printed form at the restaurant. In a bistro, I expect a blackboard or a fresh sheet; the descriptions Parker provided were so lengthy that by the time he got to the third one, we had forgotten what the first one was.
There was a point where I didn't think that I would give Paprika five stars. It would have been one thing had the staff member (who, it turned out, was on her first night) flubbed our greeting, but an experienced operator should have handled this better. Though Parker provided excellent service for the rest of the evening and it took awhile for the unwelcome feeling to dissipate.
That said, I am satisfied this doesn't happen regularly. But the truth is, the food Hunt and her team produce is simply too good to rate anything less than five stars. Not only are they doing something different in a sea of Thai curries, badly prepared duck confit and boring pulled pork, they are simply doing it better than most.
Average per-person cost for two courses and a nonalcoholic beverage, exclusive of tax and tip, $40.
